know what sucks? krispy kreme donuts suck
i am by training a pastry chef
i work the grill in a restaurant because around 25 years ago i found out the grill guy gets on average 2 bucks an hour more than the pantry guy doing desserts
we all do what we have to do so i mostly bake on my own time
every once in a while the paths converge so its ok
but by training i am a baker and my personal specialty is breads
i was taken under the wing of a master baker (get the jokes over now please) at around 18 and he taught me about bread
i will tell you what he told me and what i have told every baker i got to work with since
bread is a living thing
bread is the whos calling out to horton
it has to be treated with the same respect you give another living creature who is sustaining you
the bread never fails
only you fail in making the bread its happiest
now back to baking the best and maybe least appreciated baking is your neighbor hood donut guy
he got up at midnight and coddled and loved his dough
he carefully proofed it and while it rose he mixed and cut and fried his cake production
then he brought the bread to its peak and fried it golden
he flipped those doughnuts with a skill that nick mason would envy
once perfect they are cooled and glazed and fed to the hungry donut loving public
that is one hell of a lot of human involvement
krispy kreme squirts theirs out of a nozzle and the yeast speed rises in the grease
then they are sugar slathered while still hot
its sickening to think of
eating fried dough squirted from the sphincter of some souless machine
dunkin donuts rules because they make doughtnuts
they dont squirt donuts out there
= new reply since forum marked as read
All others are pretenders. Also Dunkin is an evil RW company owned by Carlyle Group that no longer takes the "time to make the donuts." Flash-frozen factory donuts. If Fred the Baker were alive to see this, it'd kill him. Also, their coffee is crap.
Hand-made. Pretty much the worst thing for you ever. They also supply Starbucks' donuts in the Seattle, NYC and Boston (The northeast being Dunkin's backyard.) markets. (This was done explicitly as a f**k-you to Dunkin for the "America Runs on Dunkin" campaign. Starbucks sells them for a loss just to be able to say they have better donuts than DD.)
I'm still using my accidental pizza dough (discovered when I was too impatient to let my focaccia rise a second time) but plan to explore more base dough recipes soon.
maybe with chocolate, but that's not necessary.
I hate the sugar-and-air KK doughnuts. Even so, if there is a box of them sitting in the office, it is inevitable that I will succumb to the aroma and eat one. Or two.
If you want that much sugar overload, just buy a stick of sugar cane and chew on that all morning. At least you'll get some nutrients with the raw cane.
And I have great respect for anyone that performs the art of baking, be it pastry or breads. I don't have anywhere near the background as you, but I am professionally trained. I just couldn't make a living at it, and went back to the art that has always "drawn" me: drafting.
Still, when I was in school, my drafting and graphic arts background helped immensely for being creative. I only wish the "food industry" paid a living wage in Houston (we tried with a referendum years ago, but the hotel and restaurant businesses got people to vote against it.)
As for doughnuts, I don't know how popular Dunkin Donuts is locally, because Shipley's Donuts has been around for decades longer. Most people I know from around here don't even think of Dunkin Donuts, first or second! But, Shipley's does them right, just as you describe.
Now the one pastry item I will argue with anyone is kolaches. Those that seems to think Kolache Factory makes great kolaches have no idea what constitutes a kolache!
This is a kolache:
This is a "pig-in-a-blanket":
How do you confuse pastries as different as that?!
but I have made kolaches, ages ago. I don't think I have that recipe any longer, so I'll have to look for a good traditional one.
Have you ever seen one of the old Julia Child shows where she demonstrates making strudel? That's why I've never attempted it! 
Apple strudel is what most people know, but cherry is great, too! 
And if it doesn't have a drive-thru, then for some, it's a big "forget it!"
We have some great bakeries here, and two are within a ten-minute drive from home. I've used one for a company anniversary cake, and the owners had never heard of the bakery before, despite it's general "well-known" status across the city. They were also blown away by the quality of the single-layer German Chocolate Cake
I've also used a little German bakery for morning snacks and sweets, none of which were donuts. As usual, they were amazed by the quality. Here's another little, family-run bakery right in their midst, and they've never heard of it. I might have paid a little more for the sweets than for an equivalent weight in donuts, but they always remembered when I brought those special goodies.
I guess you just have to introduce people to the idea of stopping at a bakery instead of doing the drive-thru do-nuts. Eventually, they have the thought, "Oh! It really is worth the inconvenience."
were the ones my mom made herself when my sisters and I were young.
OK so they were fried in shortening.
To a nice golden brown.
Then cooled a bit and put into a paper bag with powdered sugar...shaken, not stirred.
Oh, sweet heaven...
I think that about sums it up.
It's their main location with three other franchises. I worked at the one in Houston back in the mid-90s for about a year. They make some great pastries!
One thing that was a cool benefit of working there was that at the end of the day on Saturday, they'd pull out all the pastries that hadn't sold that week and we'd pick out what we wanted (what we didn't pick out would be ground up with hazelnuts, sugar and maybe some butter to be used as a filling the next week.) I'd often go on to my late-night radio show that evening, with a box full of high quality (and high fat!) pastries for all the people there for the show before mine. Their only complaint was that I was making them fat 
I was just referring to hole in the wall donut places, like my favorite that just has a sign up that says "Donuts" and make the most amazing apple spice donuts anywhere.
Never been to Andre's but I'll definitely check it out! Wife is gluten free, so I do all of my donut eating solo, but I think I can muster up enough class to go to a fine pastry shop by myself Thanks for the tip.
So you could go for a cup of tea and a slice of génoise cake
I also recommend the chocolate-filled croissants, if you want something to go
now THEMS some good donuts.
dunkin's are cake. heavy. you could break a window with them.
kk, though nothing but a little dough, lots of sugar glaze, puffed to almost nothing, deepfried..... and excellent!
i DON'T WANT my doughnuts healthy. (not that dunkin's are...)
If you don't, fine. Why you gotta pee on other people's parade?
Just sayin'. I wouldn't eat a Dunkin' Dognut if you paid me.
Bake
there's bad, and then there's worse, but when you get right down to it even the terrible still taste pretty good!
Sadly, I haven't had a doughnut in about six or seven months (waistline concerns) but this thread is making me think of taking a lttle stroll to the neighborhood bakery just across the way....
...nor krispy nor kreme.
They're way too sugary, plus they tend to be stale on the outside... as if by design. Ugh. Give me Shipley's or give me death 
I've had them wimpy yankee cake dough so-called 'do-nuts' from Dunkin' in and around Boston.
There's a shop on damn near every street corner.
In fact, you can stand in front of one and see three others up and down the street.
(Their coffee is passable, but nothing to write home about.)
When I was a kid there was a Krispy Kreme shop right around the corner from Birmingham's showcase rococo movie palace...The Alabama Theater.
(I could go on about that, too.)
The shop had a big plate glass window right at the bus stop.
And you could watch the Krispy Kreme guy make doughnuts while you waited for your bus.
He wore a white T shirt, white pants, and a white apron.
He did not wear a hairnet or latex gloves.
He'd dump a huge blob of risen dough out of a stainless steel bowl onto a large butcher block counter..
Roll it out into about a 3' X 5' sheet.
Then he'd grab his doughnut cutter and start whacking.
He had big hands with long fingers.
Cut a nut with his right hand and loop it on his left thumb, on and on.
He went so fast his motions were blurred.
He could get about a half dozen on his thumb and then another half dozen on his left ring finger.
Then he'd lay those out on a tray and start over.
Damn, he was fast.
The guy was a real artiste.
Inevitably I'd run inside and lay my nickel down (this was in the late 40s) for a fresh, hot doughnut and munch it while I waited for the bus.
OK, so now they've automated the process.
And I miss the guy-in-the-window.
But the Krispy Kremes are STILL just as good.
I'd say that's the case for the Eastern South, and not so much the Western South
They used to have their stores all over the place in Houston, and then they scaled back their operations considerably. One of their heavy-media-praised factory-stores has been a 24-hr Burger King (with WiF!) for the last 3-4 years. Throughout it all, people were still buying Shipley's Donuts. And in the last few years (when I've been working) I have rarely seen KK donuts. It's almost always Shipley's and sometimes another one called "Southern Maid" or something like that. They were okay, but Shipley's is still the best for The South
